No one could confuse PlayhouseSquare with a Balkan bar.

But Goran Bregovic came close.

On Monday, June 15, the rocker-turned-Gypsy-bandleader transformed the Ohio Theatre into a Balkan dance party as part of the Cleveland Museum of Art's Viva! and Gala Around Town Series.

Horns blared. Singers wailed. And a single rhythm bass drum kept it all driving.

And there was Bregovic, dressed in a pale metallic suit, leading his 18-piece band from Serbia.

He directed and played along with more than just his ensemble, though. The crowd of 800 clapped, danced and wailed along to Bregovic and his Wedding and Funeral Orchestra.

Bregovic, who became famous the 1970s in his native Yugoslavia playing rock 'n' roll, has transformed himself into a world-music star. His ascent began in 1989, when he scored Emir Kusturica's film "Time of the Gypsies."

He hasn't lost his will to rock, albeit like a Gypsy.

The 2½-hour show began with Alen Ademovic taking center stage to pound out a rhythm on a bass drum known as a Goc. Ademovic, who also boasts a beautifully wounded voice, was joined by the five other members of Bregovic's Gypsy Brass Band.

Not via the stage; they entered through the crowd, blaring their driving horns.

It's a style of traditional horn music made famous at the Dragacevski Sabor, one of the world's most vibrant music festivals. Every year since 1960, hundreds of thousands of music fans have traveled the winding roads to Guca, a village of 3,000 nestled in the mountains of western Serbia.

Bregovic, who resides in Paris and Belgrade, has been accused by purists of rebranding the Gypsy horn music of Serbia as his own. But as he showed Monday, this is, in essence, world music -- forged out of diverse, disparate elements into something new and vibrant.

His Bulgarian singers -- dressed in traditional garb and armed with throaty, ululating voices -- made songs such as "Venzinatiko" sound wounded, not just driving. Bregovic's string quartet matched plucked rhythms with elegant atmosphere. And his Sextet of Male Voices deftly mixed bellowed baritones with a sweet harmony.

But it was the horns that gave Cleveland a taste of Guca.

Stojan Dimov's wild yet melodic saxophone on "Ciribiribela" made audience members forget that they were in a theater -- inspiring them to clap along and dance in the aisles.

By the time Bregovic and his band lit into his moody yet jumpy "Mesecina," the Ohio Theatre almost felt like the movie in which the song appears -- Kusturica's 1995 Palme d'Or-winning dark war comedy "Underground."

Bregovic and his band got looser as the party went on, playing off the audience and one another.

The 30-minute encore opened with a traditional war song, then veered full force with a frenzied version of "Kalasnikov," also from "Underground." Rather than end with a horn frenzy, though, Bregovic called his string players and male choir back onstage for a moody finale that mixed up the elements.

Gypsy horns. Balkan folk. European choral music.

In other words, a world of music inspired by a little village far, far away.